The Transport Disadvantaged – Community Transport or Mainstream?

This paper is based on a study undertaken for the New South Wales Department of Transport in 1991 to examine the cost of providing transport services for the aged and those with disabilities through the Community Transport program. A sample of Community Transport Projects in N.S.W. country and metropolitan areas was studies in detail and data collected on the costs of operating the modes which they used to provide transport for the aged and disabled. A cost model was then developed to determine the factors which influence the cost per vehicle kilometre for each service delivery based on the data collected. Discussions were also held with users of the service to determine the quality of service provided by each of the modes. The results of this study are discussed within the context of the changes which have occurred in the N.S.W. bus industry as a result of the 1990 Passenger Transport Act which now gives operators greater opportunity to plan services to meet the needs of the market in their local area

The role of stated preferences and discrete- choice models in identifying individual preferences for traffic management devices

Responsible local governments recognize the need to be sensitive to the local environmental implications of decisions taken in the course of developing strategies to ensure the efficient use of scarce resources. Rather than rely on the pressures of lobby groups to direct government behavior in relation to community concerns, a preferred strategy is to identify the preferences and choices of the community as a whole and to use information from a representative cross-section of the community to aid in making environmentally-linked decisions that maximize the benefits to the affected community. This paper demonstrates how discrete-choice models can be used to identify community choices among alternative traffic-management devices designed to improve the traffic environment within and in the vicinity of local residential streets. Using a “before” and “after” survey strategy, the study provides evidence to support the view that a set of guidelines representing the community's preferences for different devices should be based on an empirical model estimated on a sample of residents who have already had exposure to a range of devices

What Type of Road Pricing Scheme might appeal to Politicians? Viewpoints on the Challenge in gaining the citizen and public servant vote by staging reform

The greatest hurdle facing road pricing reform is political commitment. With rare exception, efforts to introduce significant reform in road pricing, aimed at raising sufficient revenue to ensure that road investment and ongoing maintenance is secured, without an additional impost to users above current outlays, while at the same time reducing traffic congestion, has fallen largely on politically non-supportive ears. The big challenge is to convince politicians (and their advisers) that it is possible to reform road pricing so that users are made better off (at least the great majority) in terms of time spent travelling and monies outlaid, and that government secures growing levels of revenue, but with at least some funds being used to improve public transport and the existing road network. This paper identifies the major issues that make much of the academic research into road pricing somewhat limited in terms of achieving real change. Staging reform is an appealing way forward, but ensuring the order and timing of events to secure progress is the big challenge. We offer some suggestions, including some ideas on new language designed to increase the level of buy in, and recognise that progress through action will require compromises in respect of an ‘ideal’ economically efficient pricing reform agenda.Australian Research Council Discovery Program Gran

What type of road pricing scheme might appeal to politicians? Gaining the citizen vote by staging reform

The greatest hurdle facing road pricing reform is political commitment. With rare exception, efforts to introduce significant reform in road pricing aimed at raising sufficient revenue to ensure that road investment and ongoing maintenance is secured without an additional impost to users above current outlays, while at the same time reducing traffic congestion, has fallen largely on politically non-supportive ears. The big challenge is to convince politicians (and their advisers) that it is possible to reform road pricing so that users are made better off (at least the great majority) in terms of time spent travelling and monies outlaid, and government coffers secure growing levels of revenue, but with at least some funds being used in supporting vertical equity to improve public transport and the existing road network. This paper identifies the major issues that make much of the academic research into road pricing somewhat pointless in terms of achieving real change. Staging reform is an appealing way forward, but ensuring the order and timing of events to secure progress is the big challenge. We offer some suggestions, including some ideas on new language designed to increase the level of buy in, and recognise that progress through action will require compromises in respect of an ‘ideal’ economically efficient pricing reform agenda

ECONOMIC REWARD AND ON-ROAD PERFORMANCE OF LONG DISTANCE TRUCKING: AN ECONOMETRIC ASSESSMENT

This paper reports the results of an econometric analysis of the influences on economic reward and on-road behaviour of long distance truck drivers in Australia. Drawing on a 1990 survey of a sample of 800 truck drivers selected from owner drivers and employee drivers, we identify the important role that rates of pay and the payment method have on the propensity to speed. The richness of the data enables us to evaluate the endogenous linkage between speeding, the taking of pills, and the self-imposition of schedules, as well as identify industry practices which have desirable and undesirable impacts on the performance of drivers. The empirical findings corroborate anecdotal evidence on the issues which need action in the interests of minimising the negative externalities of an essentially efficient and safe industry

THE ROLE OF STATED PREFERENCES AND DISCRETE CHOICE MODELS IN IDENTIFYING COMMUNITY PREFERENCES FOR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT DEVICES

Responsible local governments recognise the need to be sensitive to the local environmental implications of decisions taken in the course of developing strategies to ensure the efficient use of scarce resources. Rather than rely on the pressures of lobby groups to direct government behaviour in relation to community concerns, a preferred strategy is to identify the preferences and choices of the community as a whole and to use information from a representative cross-section from the community to aid in making environmentally-linked decisions which maximise the benefits to the affected community. This paper demonstrates how discrete-choice models can be used to identify community choices amongst alternative traffic management devices designed to improve the traffic environment within and in the vicinity of local residential streets. Using a "before" and "after" survey strategy, the study provides evidence to support the view that a set of guidelines representing the communities preferences for different devices should be based on an empirical model estimated on a sample of residents who have already had exposure to a range of devices

Developments in surface passenger transport. Implications for tourism

This paper was presented at the 1991 Tourism Outlook Forum (Australian Tourism Research Institute). It examines the state of play in the surface passenger transport system and comments on the implications of developments for tourism. Transport is increasingly being regarded as a weak link in Australian tourism, largely due to the declining standard of infrastructure. Nowhere is this more evident than in the road system. As governments at all levels attempt to cope with less resources, road funding is not keeping pace with traffic growth. As a consequence, some of the nation’s busiest highways are in need of major upgrading. The automobile, the most commonly used form of tourist transport, is becoming more fuel efficient as a result of technological developments and environmental pressures. The bus and coach industry is undergoing major changes as a result of competitive pressures both from within the industry and from other modes. Whilst the prospects for charter operations are sound, long-distance express services are under threat, especially as airline competition erodes their market. Conventional rail is also suffering in this environment, but the five government rail systems are under increasing pressure to curb the deficits on long-distance passenger services. The likely outcome is a more efficient rail operation with higher fares and better services on lines with the heaviest traffic. This should provide better opportunities to incorporate rail into tourism products, but rail’s roll will be limited. The proposal to introduce a network of high speed rail services connecting Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide with service levels similar to airline standards offers hope of a significant expansion of the travel market. The Very Fast Train proposal could have a major impact on air and other public transport modes, but would also aim to take a sizable proportion of people out of their cars. This would make it easier to develop attractive packages for a broader tourist market. Finally, Bass Strait has seen the introduction of a high speed ferry and the TT Line will replace the Abel Tasman in 1993 with a luxurious and larger vessel. The outlook for the future is a transport sector with a growing recognition that it is a vital part of tourism

Direct and cross elasticities for freight distribution access charges

The interest in reform of road user charges for freight distribution in many countries continues unabated, linked to a desire to improve economic efficiency as well as recognition of the declining revenue base from traditional sources, especially fuel excise. A critical input into the assessment framework used to identify the impact of alternative access charges on freight vehicle utilisation, by vehicle class, is a suite of direct and cross elasticities. This paper uses data collected in Australia in 2010- 11 on alternative access charge regimes obtained from a stated choice experiment, used in estimation of mixed logit models calibrated on vehicle market shares, to derive matrices of direct and cross access charging elasticities that represent the relationship between an access charge (defined by combinations of distance, mass, and location), vehicle class choice, total kilometres, and tonne-kilometres carried in the vehicle class segments. The elasticities can be used to estimate the response of heavy vehicle operators (and shippers) to price signals under the different access charging schemes

Practical solutions for sampling alternatives in large-scale models

Many large-scale real-world transport applications have choice sets that are so large as to make model estimation and application computationally impractical. The ability to estimate models on subsets of the alternatives is thus of great appeal, and correction approaches have existed since the late 1970s for the simple multinomial logit (MNL) model. However, many of these models in practice rely on nested logit specifications, for example, in the context of the joint choice of mode and destination. Recent research has put forward solutions for such generalized extreme value (GEV) structures, but these structures remain difficult to apply in practice. This paper puts forward a simplification of the GEV method for use in computationally efficient implementations of nested logit. The good performance of this approach is illustrated with simulated data, and additional insights into sampling error are also provided with different sampling strategies for MNL